With my Nonna, long before I knew about love stories

Romantic love may be the love we notice first and the love we talk about first, but it’s not always the love that shapes us or touches us most deeply. For me, It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live: An Italian-American Story of Coming Home is a love story.

It is the love story of a child and her nonna in the kitchen, where love simmered slowly in pots of tomato sauce, filling the house with a sense of peace. It is the love story of a mother and daughter learning, over time, to understand one another, to accept each other, and to find peace together. Not perfectly, but enough. Most of all, it is a love story about coming home – not just to a place, but to self.

The truest love stories might not be about romance at all. They might be about learning how to open your heart to others, to your past, and sometimes to your own imperfect self.

Maybe a love story is simply the story of coming home.

And maybe it takes a lifetime to understand that love was there all along.